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The Middle Way is achieved when one reaches that point of cosmic balance between austerity and the creature comforts of the world. The ascetics who were with the Buddha were critical of him because he was no longer living an austere lifestyle. They considered his life too “cushy.” He was eating beautiful food and wearing a fine robe, while they existed on a few grains of rice and slept uncovered on a bed of nails.

The ascetics asked the Buddha, “What kind of teacher and yogi are you? You are soft, weak, indulgent.”

To which the Buddha replied, “I, too, have slept on nails; I’ve stood with my eyes open to the sun in the hot sands beside the Ganges. I’ve eaten so little food that you couldn’t fill one fingernail with the amount I ate each day. Whatever ascetic practices under the sun human beings have done, I, too, have done. Through them all I have learned that fighting against oneself through such practices is not the way.”

Through the years I have known a few ascetic-type personalities who forever deny the body, its needs, and its care. One young man I knew was so physically beautiful and so unhappy and grim. His eating habits were very austere and unpleasant. He always seemed to be miserable in the pursuit of his spiritual awareness. He munched on raw garlic cloves like they were peanuts and insisted they left no pungent odor on his breath. The rest of the world did not agree. I recall one acquaintance saying to this fellow that he would probably throw himself under a train rather than eat a Frito. His response was, “What’s a Frito?” If misery, self-denial and self-imposed suffering were the way to get “it,” we would all have gotten “it” a long time ago.

The Buddha emphasized the Middle Way, which he likened to the successful playing of the lute, the strings being not too taut, not too loose, but with just the right amount of pressure. We all need to seek a way to bring forth such balance in our own lives.

We think that freedom means having more choice; this has been drilled into us and all that we see around us seems to indicate that more choice equals more freedom which is always a good thing.

Think again.

Isn’t this kind of choice taking our mind (and energy and time) away from things that really matter. Does it really matter whether we buy Brand A as against Brand B (as long as both brands are similar on the most important parameters)?

The path of spiritual practice involves reducing our available choices and Buddhist meditation practice at retreats seems to support this viewpoint – just consider the lack of diversity when it comes to the menu 🙂

This piece by Ken McLeod is excellent and will give you a deeper understanding of this viewpoint.

For a newcomer it might appear that the Buddha was a pessimist since he stressed dukkha and its causes and eradication. It might appear that Buddhism claims that our lives are inevitably filled with suffering; however that impression is incorrect. It is very,very important to be clear about this central word which appears in all sects of Buddhism. What exactly is it and what is it not?

“Things are dukkha because they are impermanent and therefore unreliable. Actually, dukkha is natural and not suffering. It becomes suffering when the mind identifies with phenomena and grasps. The meaning of dukkha that conveys this process is derived from the breakdown of the word into du, which means “apart from” and kha—or akash—which means “space.” This gives the sense of being apart from the spacious, the perfect, and the complete. In this way dukkha conveys the deepest anguish and dilemma of the self, which is its state of separation from the whole.”

“To be no one special means we are psychologically free of the illusion of I-as-a-Me—we no longer see ourselves as a unique self, independent of the world around us. Not holding-on to any particular view or opinion, or the stories about our past and who we are, or the many self-images and identities we use to define our Me—what remains? The presence of just being. This gives us an experiential taste of our most authentic self, with the inner knowing that who we truly are—our basic connectedness—is more than just our self-images, our stories, our body.”

This can be the beginning of the understanding of the idea of anatta (no-self in Pali)